Egypt slams HRW report on crackdown deaths as ‘biased’

Cairo, Aug 15 (IANS) Egypt on Saturday slammed a report by New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) on the killings of supporters of ousted Islamist President Mohamed Morsi during a security crackdown in 2013 on two protest camps as “biased and politicised”.

“Egypt strongly rejects such a politicised and non-objective report that lacks the least standards of credibility and neutrality,” foreign ministry spokesman Ahmed Abu-Zaid said in a statement, Xinhua reported.

Morsi was removed by the military in early July 2013 in response to mass protests against his one-year rule, as well as the currently outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, Morsi’s power base.

On August 14, 2013, security forces killed hundreds of people during the dispersal of two major pro-Morsi sit-ins in Cairo and Giza. The crackdown on Morsi’s loyalists since then has left more than 1,000 people dead and thousands more jailed.

The human rights watchdog said the dispersal could amount to “crimes against humanity,” calling for an international UN-led probe into the crackdown killings, a call that is described by the Egyptian foreign ministry as “ridiculous.”